by Jose Latour
As he screwed on the set’s back cover, Rancaño gloated over his acting job of four weeks earlier, when he had sweet-talked the shop owner into selling him the piece of junk for sixty pesos, to be paid for in a five-peso installment plan, deductible from his monthly wage. The boss had warned his jack-of-all-trades that he could take the set home only after it had been fully paid for, which was precisely what the scout had expected. Rancaño tittered anticipating the surprise his resignation would cause in exactly twenty-one days, on the pretext of a job at a new, nameless casino. He’d suggest to the owner settling the balance with his monthly salary, and he’d take the antique set home that same day.
Arturo Heller put on his best smile and rang the bell at precisely 4:02 P.M. Most tenants in the three-story apartment building at 501 Estrada Palma Street were low-income clerical workers pretending they didn’t mind being losers. Heller’s fiancée, Esther Sosa de Quesada, was the only child of a married couple in their fifties.
Even though the chaste, twenty-year-old blonde Pentecostal had a sunny disposition, what led people of all ages and races to stare at her had nothing to do with her outgoing personality and Christian values. In his rather vast experience, Heller had seen great bodies and beautiful faces, but not before Esther had he found a woman with an unbelievable body who was in addition graced with adorable, perfect features. The student teacher with the peachy skin and the long-lashed turquoise-blue eyes also had high cheekbones, a slightly upturned nose, and well-formed lips that gave away a radiant smile to nearly everyone.
For eight months, posing as a hardworking salesman who spent most of his time on the road, the onetime law student had stalked Esther as a jackal follows a wounded gazelle. At present, formally engaged to Esther, he only visited her home on Sunday evenings, as was the custom. The fact that her parents behaved like security guards hadn’t reduced his yearning for the luscious blonde. From Monday to Friday, as though she were seven, Señor Sosa punctually picked Esther up at the Normal School. When Heller came by, her mother would read the Bible on a living room rocking chair, six feet away from the sweethearts. Were he to take Esther to the movies, both papa and mama would tag along. But Heller was not one to despair. He felt certain of overcoming all obstacles. At the right moment and place—what a day!—Esther would surrender her virginity to him.
The young woman’s surprised mother—it was a Saturday—opened the front door and let Heller in. He gave her a peck on the cheek and ascribed his sudden return from Cienfuegos to brisk sales. But Papa and Esther were at choir rehearsal and wouldn’t get home earlier than six, the lady made known. Heller explained that the motive for his untimely visit was the lovely stool he held. Two hours earlier he had admired it in Orbay y Cerrato and decided he wanted to present it to his future wife, for her dressing table. Wasn’t it fit for a queen?
The pleased mother reached for and tactfully eyed the round, four-legged piece with the vinyl-covered seat. All the goodwill in the world wouldn’t make it grace the bedroom of a ruined baroness, but she accepted it and assured Heller that as soon as her daughter arrived she’d give her his present. Beaming, he again kissed the matron’s cheek and left, telling her that tomorrow evening he would arrive at eight sharp. The good soul couldn’t even dream that from that day on her daughter would be resting her perfect behind on fifty-seven thousand pesos hidden between the stool’s stuffing and the frame.
Certain that the Virgin had performed a miracle on him, Melchor Loredo prayed for directions to the proper hiding place and during his after-lunch nap dreamed of a well-drilling rig at work. When his wife woke him, he sipped his usual cup of espresso distractedly, figuring things out. Forty-five minutes later, at a home-appliances store on Sixtieth and Twenty-third Avenue, in Marianao, Loredo bought two Presto pressure cookers. Back at his small apartment, he locked himself in the bathroom, packed fifty-eight thousand pesos into them, adjusted the lids, and put the gadgets into a multilayered paper bag. Then he took a cab to the small town of El Calvario.
His parents-in-law dwelled in a thatched hut built from royal palm wood on the town’s southeast border, alongside a dirt road that petered out at the dairy farm where his wife’s father made a living. Loredo accepted an unbelievably good espresso, handed out cigarettes, made small talk until dusk, then borrowed a pick. He wandered off into a pasture ground, and near a luxuriant mango tree waited for a half hour to make sure he hadn’t been followed. Then, in full darkness, Loredo dug a three-foot-deep hole, buried the pressure cookers, and, as he shoveled the remaining earth into the paper bag, sadly wondered what would happen to the money were he to die suddenly, or be sentenced to prison. He slowly retraced his steps, pondering whether he should tell his wife where the treasure lay. Tormented by feelings of guilt for distrusting the woman he loved, he handed a crisp, fifty-peso bill to his bewildered father-in-law.
The Security Packers and Storage Company stored furniture, works of art, tapestries, rugs, and other property of people who spent long periods abroad. The warehouse was at Tenth between A and B in Lawton; working hours were from eight to twelve and from two to six. That same afternoon, the attendant on duty glanced at his watch when an old black Chevy parked by the curb. The dial said 5:40 P.M. Fucking latecomer, the clerk thought. The gray-haired guy who opened the trunk and pulled a suitcase from it sauntered in and asked for six months of storage. A courteously superficial inspection ensued—for without offending clients, the attendant had to make sure no practical joker left a dead dog—money changed hands, a receipt was extended, and the customer shuffled out.
Contreras headed straight for the psychiatric institution, feeling beat. The quiet suburb came to his mind. Modern homes peopled by middle-class families with kids, dogs, servants, and cars, all pretending to be unconcerned by the proximity of a madhouse. He anticipated the orderlies’ discreet welcome. Wondering about tips, they would say it was great to have him back. Yes, Contreras thought, he had found the ideal hideout where in a few hours he’d fall back, like a snail into its shell, for a long season.
…
Rumbling waves—endlessly coming in and breaking on the dog-toothed rock, then falling back to get ready for the next thrust—echoed along the dark coastline. Sixty yards inland, the Chevy pulled over next to the corner of First Avenue and Sixtieth. Fermín switched off the headlights and cut the ignition. A waning last-quarter moon played hide-and-seek with thick clouds; down the street, weak cones of streetlights on power poles cast a few bright spots into the darkness.
Contreras had asked Fermín to drive when he picked him up at the corner of Infanta and San Miguel Streets. The short man had sat behind the wheel, grunted, moved the seat all the way forward. He wore the same sports jacket over a tan poplin shirt, brown slacks, and his favorite nut-colored shoes. In the passenger seat, leaning on the door, Contreras didn’t look like a man who had stayed awake all night. After a warm shower, a shave, and a hot meal, he had got into a navy-blue gabardine suit.
Now, their eyes were fastened on an L-shaped building that sparkled against the pitch-black background of underbrush and rocks one block away. The Château Miramar had five floors, of which the upper four had rows of balconies whose white French windows contrasted with the chocolate-colored exterior. The tenants of the exclusive aparthotel were mostly wealthy tourists, plus several rich eccentrics in love with the place and a few refined mistresses of corrupt politicians. On any given evening the Château could simultaneously host a high-society wedding reception, a respectable family gathering, and a private party where sodomy, marijuana, and whiskey went hand in hand with flagellation, heroin, and champagne. The management succeeded in making certain that such diversity coexisted harmoniously and offered first-class service at its fashionable restaurant and bar.
“Arriving there in this heap is like going to the Pope’s funeral in shorts and tennis shoes,” Fermín quipped as he watched the main entrance, where a doorman and a parking valet looked after people going in or out.
Contreras smiled
and glanced at his watch—9:50 P.M. “They’ll take us for upscale messengers; heap instead of bikes.”
“Messengers delivering a nice package,” Fermín said, patting the huge, brand-new rawhide travel bag on the front seat.
“I’m supposed to go to apartment 35,” Contreras revealed. “The man will probably count it; then we’ll wait for a guy who’s supposed to come in at eleven. I guess he’s the singer from Capri. The man doesn’t trust him—he asked me to flatten out and keep an eye on him.”
“Why should you flatten out?” Fermín objected. “It’s better if the hot wire sees the man has some backup.”
“The singer insists on not being known by any of us, according to the man, so I’ll have to do a crouch.”
“And see him anyway.”
“You bet. If I’m not here by eleven-thirty leave the keys in the ignition and take a powder, just in case.”
Fermín nodded, still looking ahead. He was partly flattered by having been chosen, partly reluctant to face new—and unpaid—risks. “Well, should we go in?” he asked.
“Go ahead.”
The block was covered in a few seconds. At 9:52, Contreras forced a smile in the direction of the grinning doorman, who pulled the plate-glass door open for him. Fermín drove away to park at the same place, light a cigar, and wait for his buddy.
“I have an appointment in 35,” Contreras informed the desk clerk. The man glanced at a notepad, picked up an extension, asked for Señor Naguib’s apartment, and respectfully told someone that a visitor had arrived. He listened for an instant before raising his eyes to Contreras.
“Is your last name Toro, Señor?”
Contreras suppressed a smile. “Yes,” he said. Toro, Spanish for bull—an authentic though unusual surname. The bull was intact, the ox castrated.
The clerk said yes, it was Mr. Toro, then listened some more while staring at the newcomer. “Yes,” he confirmed. Finally he said “Immediately” and hung up.
“Those are the elevators, señor. Third floor, right turn.”
Contreras took in the lobby as he crossed it. Main staircase to his left, a second plate-glass door to the restaurant, two closed wooden doors. A black man brandishing a skimming spoon picked cigar and cigarette stubs from tall, sand-filled metal ashtrays. In typical fugitive fashion, Contreras had tuned his senses to essentials: He registered the crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, but missed its beautiful arabesque ornaments; noticed the furniture, but not its daringly modern design. He was not listening to the Muzak coming from hidden speakers, didn’t register the smell of the regularly atomized deodorizer.
Contreras left the cage on the third floor, turned right, took the corridor until reaching a mahogany door to which a 3 and a 5 in silver and copper had been nailed. He pressed the buzzer; a beaming Naguib opened. The Lebanese wore a white dress shirt, its collar open, the knot of his pale blue tie resting on his sternum. His trousers were charcoal-gray, his black shoes of the lace-up kind. He pumped Contreras’s right arm the way captains compliment fine platoon leaders, then waved him in.
The guest chose a chair from the French Regency–style living-room suite, watched as Naguib deposited the travel bag on a coffee table, then accepted a crystal goblet with a neat slug of Antiquary brandy. The host selected an armchair upholstered in a costly thin brocade with a pattern of golden branches and leaves on a white background. Then he opened the travel bag, pulled out the stacks of bills, and started to count. His fingers slipped over the corners of the notes with a teller’s ease. Soon Contreras gave up his original idea of following the count with his eyes and instead inspected the living room.
The sophisticated decor showed that this wasn’t a place rented for occasional meetings; no one who could afford such a plush apartment would debase it with a lease. The majesty of furniture and mirrors, drapes and lamps, paintings and ornaments went beyond the borders of the love nest to become a small temple. Due to his poor origins and cultural insufficiency, Contreras couldn’t guess that the small nymph in marble on the Louis XV console table was a piece by Canova, or that the blonde girl smiling from the canvas hung on the opposite wall was a genuine Boucher, but ignorance couldn’t impede admiration. His anxiety momentarily dissolved.
After his second sip of brandy, Contreras lit a cigarette and wondered if his being there was proof of trust or extreme distrust. He pictured men in hiding watching him. No, it didn’t figure. No motive, no benefit. He smoked placidly, then crushed the butt. He had to wait another eleven minutes for Naguib to finish.
“Is it all right?” he asked once the Lebanese put aside the last wad.
“My source said you’d taken six fifty; I expected three twenty-five.”
“Your source is wrong,” Contreras snapped. “We got six twenty-seven. There’s half of it there.”
“Must be a mistake,” Naguib said soothingly.
“We left behind a lot of five- and one-peso stacks ’cause our bags were full,” the Cuban explained. “Maybe they had six fifty in the keister and we left behind twenty-three.”
“Okay. Nevertheless, I’ll give my inside man half of three twenty-five, not to disappoint him,” Naguib said.
The opaque indifference in Contreras’s gaze indicated that the Lebanese could do as he pleased with his cut. Naguib raised his glass, arranged himself on the seat, leaned back. Priding himself on sizing up men accurately, he stared at Contreras with satisfaction. There was an otherness in the Cuban that intrigued him. Kind of guy who makes a great team leader, lousy team player. The intention was to discredit Lansky, not steal the money, and he would’ve given odds of 7 to 3 that the gang would vanish into thin air. With this in mind, that afternoon he had brought a fourth of the figure reported that same morning by his Judas to the apartment and hoarded it in the chest of drawers. But Contreras’s chivalrous behavior, which he’d considered a remote possibility at the beginning of the Bonanno-inspired plot, opened up new and vast opportunities.
“Give me the details, from the moment you entered the casino last night.”
Naguib lit a Lucky. It took Contreras sixteen minutes to make a comprehensive account of the heist, up to the minute when they left in the getaway car. “The only snags were the Pope’s death—that was a total surprise—and the guy I had to bump. The rest went as planned, no trouble at all.”
“Good work, Contreras,” Naguib said, as he filed away the fact that the guy was good at improvisation, adjusted rapidly to changing conditions. He lit a fresh cigarette, then added: “A pleasure to do business with you.”
“Same here,” Contreras obliged. “I won’t be available for a spell, but after I get back to Havana I’ll give you a ring.”
“Fine.”
“Could you tell me anything about this source of yours? I’ll see him anyway, and it’d be best if I have an idea as to what we can expect from him.”
“We can expect anything,” Naguib said. “He’s not a pro. I talked him into it and he has … sort of changed in the last two months. Not a bad guy, but he’s too emotional, unpredictable, so when he gets here you just slip into the bedroom and be ready to come out if I ask you to.”
Contreras nodded and started pulling a cigarette out of the pack. Naguib rushed to offer him a Lucky; the Cuban shook his head.
“You shouldn’t light that one, then,” the Lebanese warned. “He knows I smoke Luckies, and the different smell could give you away. It’s ten twenty-six already.”
Contreras returned the pack to his right jacket pocket. In a couple of minutes Naguib separated stacks adding up to 162,500 pesos that he left on the coffee table, dropped the remainder in the bag, then got up to wash Contreras’s glass and dispose of the butts in the ashtray. He came back to his armchair, glanced at his watch.
“Twenty-three more minutes. How old are you?”
“Fifty-three.”
“You from Havana?”
Contreras shook his head. He didn’t like to be questioned. Suddenly he remembered he was facing the m
an who had made him prosperous and could eventually make him rich.
“I was born in Morón. That’s in the province of Camagüey. And you?”
“I’m from Al Mansouriyé, a village near Beirut, Lebanon. Know the country?”
“Who wouldn’t, with a war going on.”
A minute of uncomfortable silence passed away.
“Your parents—they immigrated from Spain?” Naguib probed.
“No. My four grandparents did, though.”
“Are your parents alive?”
“Mr. Naguib, I’m gonna make an exception with you, ’cause I admire your style. But I don’t like to be questioned on family matters, personal matters, any matters. In fact, I don’t like answering questions at all.”
“Then don’t. I just wanted to pass the time.”
“Let’s pass it. My father joined the rebels in the last war against Spain. He was fifteen—can you believe it? At that age everybody is a sucker, and he swallowed the pill. You know, all that baloney about the ‘solitary star,’ ‘Run to combat, bayameses,’ and ‘Dying for the Motherland is living forever.’ Two years later he came back to his hometown with three scars from bullet wounds and landed a job laying out railroad tracks at new sugar mills being erected in Camagüey. He hung himself in 1915. A sledgehammer blow had busted his right hand and he couldn’t feed his wife and three sons on his veteran’s pension. He was thirty-four. My mother worked like a beast of burden but we never had enough, so at fifteen I stole an ox. I got salted. You know what ‘getting salted’ means in Cuba?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I served a year in the Camagüey penitentiary. Then I roamed over half of Cuba, became a bad boy. Rustler, petty thief, pickpocket, smuggler, loan shark, counterfeiter, pimp, you name it—but I never nailed a track for anyone. In ’32 I came to Havana. Being my father’s son and under a dictatorship, I swallowed my own pill: ‘The Motherland is an altar, not a stepping-stone.’”